Friday, October 30, 2009

CAMBRIDGE, UK: CSR announced that it has partnered with one of Taiwan's leading wireless communication IC design houses, Realtek, to deliver a family of Bluetooth v3.0 + High Speed (HS) and 802.11n module designs for the PC and netbook markets

These CSR PC BlueCore-based designs support the latest Bluetooth SIG specifications to enable high data transfer speeds by using the PCs Wi-Fi radio to cope with larger file sizes.

In addition to its implementation of the CSR9000 platform, already driving Bluetooth v3.0+HS in embedded markets, CSR is now also enabling complete wireless solutions for the PC market using the CSR PC BlueCore in partnership with Realtek.

The PC and netbook markets are a growing opportunity for CSRs Bluetooth silicon. This partnership with Realtek forms an integral part of CSRs ongoing strategy in the PC market and elsewhere to provide the benefits of Bluetooth and other short range wireless technologies to as many customers as possible.

Bluetooth's huge success and high attach rate in mobile devices has been down to its ease-of-use, power-efficiency and flexibility. Bluetooth v3.0 + HS builds on this success with the Alternate MAC/PHY (AMP) specification which combines the best of two technologies; the familiar interface and the option of low-power operation inherent to Bluetooth, and the speed of Wi-Fi.

Thanks to the AMP architecture defined by the Bluetooth SIG, these new modules can switch between CSRs PC BlueCore Bluetooth radio and Realteks Wi-Fi radio seamlessly while transferring small or large files such as word documents or videos from a notebook to a handset. In this way the modules can ensure maximum speed and power efficiency while only presenting one unified interface to the user.

“CSR was amongst the first companies to qualify a Bluetooth v3.0 + HS product and this partnership is the next step in delivering the high-speed, power efficient data transfer rates of Bluetooth v3.0 to the PC and netbook markets,” said Anthony Murray, Senior Vice President of CSRs Audio and Consumer Business Unit.

“Our strategy through this partnership is to give our customers the flexibility to combine our best-in-class Bluetooth platform with their preferred Wi-Fi supplier.”

“Thanks to the partnership with CSR we can offer our customers a low cost and highly effective way to integrate the latest Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology,” said Luke Huang, Vice President of Realtek Communications Network Business Unit. “CSR is a market leader in Bluetooth and its silicon contributes to our module delivering industry-leading connectivity to PC and netbook users.”